The Neat Freak and the Not-So-Neat Boyfriend
by benjji2795
Summary: Jude and Connor move in together as they start college, but what happens when Jude takes issue with Connor's manner of maintaining the apartment?


"I can't believe we're finally going to move in together Con," Jude said excitedly, glancing around at the boxes scattered around the floor of their new apartment.

"You know, it's not like we haven't already been basically living together for, I don't know the last five years, for as much as we were constantly at each other's houses," Connor chortled, dropping the last few boxes on the floor and walking over to Jude, wrapping his arm around him and placing a kiss on his cheek.

"You know what I mean Con. We finally have a place all to ourselves; where my moms or your dad aren't constantly watching over us." Jude replied, giving Connor a playful nudge. "And at our houses they never let us sleep in the same bed, which honestly is one of my favorite things to do."

Connor glanced down, winking at Jude.

"You disgust me, you know that right?" Jude said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

"Oh come on, you know you love it!"

"I don't know about loving _it_ , but I do love _you_ ," Jude answered, turning and standing up on his tiptoes to press a kiss to Connor's temple.

"Aww, babe you're so short, I love it," Connor teased lovingly.

"I can't believe our babies are moving out and going to college!" Lena cried from behind them, interrupting their moment as she, Stef, and Adam entered the room.

"Crazy how fast they grow up, isn't it?" Adam mused. "I remember when Connor was just this high and he—"

"Daaaaaaad!" Connor groaned, cutting him off.

"Okay fine son, I won't embarrass you this time," Adam replied cheekily.

"You know Connor, your dad's already told me plenty of 'embarrassing' stories about you and I've found them all to be totally adorable," Jude commented.

"That's not fair!" Connor pouted. "Your moms don't have any embarrassing stories about you that I don't already know!"

"You know, I'm sure Callie has a few stories that she could share," Stef interjected, giving Connor a sly grin.

"Why are you taking his side mom?!" Jude exclaimed.

"All is fair in love and war," Stef answered, chuckling softly.

"Anyway," Lena said, "I think we've brought in everything. Do you two need help unpacking or should we just go on our way?"

"I think we've got it. Connor?" Jude said, turning to look at Connor who nodded in agreement.

"Okay, well you two have fun!" Adam said cheerily, stepping forward to give the two of them hugs.

"But not too much fun," Stef added quickly.

"And be safe!" Lena chimed in. By now both boys were beet-red, quickly giving Stef and Lena hugs as they hurried their families out the door. As soon as the door was closed behind them, Connor turned, grabbing Jude's hand and smirking at him, trying to drag him to the bedroom.

"Connorrrrrrr!" Jude whined. "You know that I want to, but look at all these boxes. We need to unpack first!" Connor whimpered, sticking out his lower lip and pouting. Jude laughed. "Nice try, but this is the one time that's not going to work."

* * *

"Jude, what am I supposed to do with all these books? I don't see a bookshelf anywhere," Connor called out from the living room as Jude was putting away dishes into the kitchen cabinets.

"I don't know, maybe just stack them in a corner somewhere," Jude suggested, walking in to find Connor surrounded by five open boxes with items strewn everywhere. "Don't you think you could be a little more organized with your unpacking strategy, God this is such a mess Connor," Jude sighed. "Perhaps just one box at a time would be a better way of doing this?" he continued, sliding all but one of the boxes away from Connor.

"I suppose that's probably a good idea," Connor mumbled, pulling the one box left in front of him, as Jude disappeared back into the kitchen.

* * *

A few hours later, after they had finished packing, the two of them were cuddling on the couch when the pile of books caught Jude's eye. He tried to ignore the fact that they were haphazardly stacked (not even really stacked neatly, but kind of piled up) and not in any particular order, he really did, but it bothered him.

"Give me a minute," Jude muttered, untangling himself from Connor and crawling across the floor to the corner with the books.

"What are you doing Jude?" Connor asked, sitting up and leaning over to see what Jude was doing.

"Organizing the books," Jude replied coolly.

"Do you really have to do that now?" Connor whined, wanting Jude to come back and snuggle more with him.

"Yeah, it's gonna bother me if I don't fix it," Jude answered.

"Okay." Connor said flatly, standing up and walking to the bedroom, disappointed.

"Connor I," Jude sighed, rising to his feet and following Connor. "Connor, you know how much that stuff bothers me. Did you think that moving in together was going to change that?"

"No I didn't think that I just—I know you do that, I'm just not used to it, because stuff like that was never a problem in your room or mine, you know? You never needed to get up while we were cuddling because something was bothering you, 'cause everything that could you already took care of," Connor explained.

"Oh."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't be getting upset. Come on," Connor said, standing up and taking Jude back into the living room with him. Connor sat on the floor by where Jude had been working on organizing the books, motioning for Jude to sit in between his legs. Jude did, and kept working while Connor snuggled up into him from behind.

* * *

After the incident with the books, from Connor's perspective, things seemed to be going pretty smoothly in their apartment. Sure, it was obvious the place wasn't always kept spotless, but it looked fine. Jude didn't seem bothered anyway, only giving him gentle reminders here and there. So Connor saw no reason to change the way he was doing things. But Jude definitely was bothered, even if Connor didn't know it. See here's the problem, they were polar opposites in how they took care of their spaces. For Jude, everything had to be clean and neat. Dirty clothes were never left lying on the floor, dirty dishes were either washed and put away or put in the dishwasher, and trash was always thrown out immediately.

Connor did none of these things. There was an ever growing pile of clothes on the floor of their bedroom, the sink was practically overflowing with dirty dishes, and there was trash everywhere. Jude was trying to be patient with Connor; he couldn't expect Connor to perfectly match up with his expectations when it came to maintaining the apartment, but he had thought Connor would be better than this. Still, he refused to nag Connor about being neater. Jude took care of his own messes and just dropped hints to Connor about maybe being a little tidier. It was getting on his nerves but Jude managed for a couple of weeks, until one fateful afternoon…

Jude walked into the apartment after a particularly stressful day of classes. For some reason only God knows why, he was taking calculus, despite the fact that he was an English major. And Jude was barely keeping his head above water in the class, managing a 60.6% D- grade. To make matters worse, Jude understood nothing about the lesson he was just in, and they were taking a quiz on the material the next day. Not to mention he was basically in the same boat with his chemistry class; why he had to take these Gen. Ed. classes was beyond Jude, but they had him teetering on the edge of flunking and being put on academic probation. To say that Jude was on edge when he walked in the door was a massive understatement. That's when he saw Connor drop an empty bag of chips on the floor next to the couch, and he snapped.

"Oh my God Connor, how is it that you can stand to be such a slob?!" Jude shouted.

"Excuse me, what did you just say?" Connor asked defensively.

"You know damn well what I just said," Jude snapped. "Have you looked around our apartment recently? We are literally living in a pig sty!"

"It's not that bad!" Connor protested.

"Not that bad?! Are you sure we're living in the same apartment? Why don't you take a look at the _six_ empty bags of chips not even a foot away from you? Or maybe why don't you look in our bedroom, where you can't even see the floor there are so many items of clothing on it? And what about the kitchen, where there are literally flies living off the dirty dishes!" Jude screamed, venting all of his recently building frustration and directing it at Connor.

"I was going to take care of all that stuff! Besides, you never said it was bothering you! How am I supposed to know if you don't tell me?" Connor countered.

"Because I didn't think you were really that thick! I thought you knew me well enough to tell when something is bothering me, but I guess not. And when were you planning on cleaning up your messes? Tomorrow? A week from now? A month from now? When the mice start moving in? I've been dropping hints about it for two weeks, Connor, two weeks! And it just keeps getting worse! I can't keep living like this!" Jude spat. "You know what Connor, I can't deal with this right now. I'm going to my moms, and don't even bother talking to me until this place is spotless, got it?" he added, turning around and slamming the door behind him. As soon as the door latched, Jude regretted yelling at Connor like that. He should've known better than to ignore that Connor's messiness was bothering him. He should've known it was going to lead to an explosion like that. But now that he had walked out, giving Connor an ultimatum like that, and having basically accused Connor of not knowing him as well as he was supposed to, he had to keep walking. So he did, sniffling all the way out to his car and all the way on his drive to his moms'.

* * *

Connor sat, mouth agape, staring at the door that Jude had just slammed. He sighed softly; Jude had every right to be pissed at him because as Connor looked around, he could see that there was no question the place was a total mess. Jude had _never_ yelled at him like that before, in fact Jude had never yelled at him _period_. They had barely ever fought, and now Jude had just screamed at him. Connor was suddenly terrified there was some other, underlying reason why Jude was so mad at him. It seemed that since Jude had said things that didn't just have to do the messy apartment it made sense that this was a fight. _I thought you knew me well enough._ Oh shit, he had massively fucked up, and had been apparently for weeks. Connor sprung up, scurrying around the apartment, trying cleaning up every single mess as fast as he could, trying to fight back the rising panic in his chest. He had to fix this _now_.

At 11:30 PM, Connor still wasn't finished cleaning and he was exhausted. He let out a sharp cry, flopping on the bed and sobbing into his pillow. He hadn't finished, and that meant that now he had to sleep alone, since he couldn't call Jude and ask him to come back. He couldn't risk Jude getting any angrier at him, even though he felt that every second they didn't talk was making things worse anyway. So Connor just lay in bed, barely sleeping and crying most of the night.

* * *

At the Adams-Foster house, Jude slept, but only fitfully. When he first arrived, he cried for about an hour. He had turned frustration that had nothing to do with Connor directly on to him, and he felt unbelievably guilty for doing so. But he didn't know how Connor was feeling; they definitely had fought, and maybe Connor was angry at him now. He had said some nasty things to Connor. He had called him a slob, said he was thick and didn't know him as well as he thought he did. So Jude decided that as much as hated doing so, maybe he should wait for Connor to come to him. He waited as afternoon turned into evening, which turned into night, and Connor didn't call or text. He was shocked; he had expected that Connor would have called him over and over again until he picked up, despite his order that he not call until the apartment was clean. Connor must be really mad, and that made Jude feel numb. If Connor wasn't calling, maybe he didn't ever intend to. And to think, it might be over just because he couldn't control his temper on a bad day and said things he never could never really mean in a million years.

* * *

After a night of no sleep, Connor simply didn't have the energy or the motivation to clean, or to go to class, or to grab his phone and call, or to even get out of bed. So he just lay there, sniffling because he had no tears left to cry.

Jude however, dragged himself to class, but he wasn't focused. He kept checking his phone, hoping that Connor had called, or that one of his moms called to tell him that Connor stopped by. But by the end of the day there was nothing, so Jude decided that he had to know. If Connor was done with him, so be it, but he couldn't wait any longer to find out. He dragged himself over to the apartment, stepping in and finding the living room much cleaner than it was when he had left yesterday (it wasn't perfect but that was okay; maybe that was a sign that Connor had taken him seriously and that's why he wasn't calling).

"Hey! Who's ther—oh it's you," Connor called out weakly, stumbling out of the bedroom and stopping just a few feet from Jude. One look at Connor was all it took for Jude to lose it. He stepped forward, throwing his arms around Connor, babbling apology after apology as the tears flowed freely from his eyes.

"I'm sorry Connor, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he choked out over and over again. "I should've never yelled, I should've never walked out, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I had a bad day and I vented everything I was feeling at you when I shouldn't have."

"It's okay," Connor replied hoarsely, rubbing Jude's back gently. "You had every right to yell at me. This place was a mess and it was entirely my fault, I should be the one apologizing to you."

"Why didn't you then? You could've called to—"

"But you told me not to, not until this place was spotless. I tried, I worked for hours last night, but it was just too much to do, and you were so upset, I didn't want to make it worse."

"You know one of the things I love about you is that you always take me seriously no matter what I say or how I say it, but this was one of those times where you should've ignored me. If I ever tell you not to talk to me and storm off, don't listen to me, please. I couldn't stay mad at you last night, but I got so scared you were still mad at me—"

"Jude," Connor said, cutting him off. "I was never mad at you at any point yesterday cause I was so upset with myself. I could never stay mad at you. Especially since everything you said was true. I _was_ being a slob and I have no idea how I missed that you were bothered. I was being _so_ thick, and I'm sorry. I promise I'll stop being so messy and take care of the apartment."

"And I promise I'll tell you when things are bothering me. I don't ever want to fight like this again Con, I love you too much and this fight hurt so much." Jude replied.

"I don't want to fight either, because I love you too much too. I think as long as we talk, we'll be okay," Connor said, pulling Jude in and kissing him. Jude nodded into the kiss in agreement.

So they did talk, about everything, and it made a difference because they never had a fight like that again.


End file.
